Infrastructure is the foundation of our civil society, says Saxe

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UTTRI associated faculty Assistant Professor Shoshanna Saxe was quoted in the Toronto Star February 11 in “How a budget with less money for repairs could leave Toronto ‘rusted out, leaky, cracked, broken’“:

“Infrastructure maintenance investment isn’t something we in the public tend to notice until it goes wrong,” said Shoshanna Saxe, PhD, P. Eng., an assistant professor of sustainable urban infrastructure, Department of civil and mineral engineering, University of Toronto.

She added that increasing extreme weather is adding further stress to the infrastructure system.

“Infrastructure that was well designed for the 20th century may not be prepared for the climate of the 21st,” said Saxe.

“Moving forward I think we need to acknowledge that infrastructure is the foundation of our civil society. It requires upkeep and investment and that costs money. If we don’t invest now it will be even more expensive in the future to catch up.”